


iron roots and golden veins

by catpoop



Category: Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
Genre: (or attempt), Canon Universe, Gen, One Shot, POV Third Person, Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:41:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27739333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catpoop/pseuds/catpoop
Summary: A tree grows within the House.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	iron roots and golden veins

**Author's Note:**

> read piranesi twice in as many days. went insane (and am still).

A tree grows within the House. Piranesi, or he who goes by Names currently unknown to him, has long gazed upon Statues of Trees. Statues of wide Trunks with sprawling Branches, of slender twigs of Youth, of canopies that shelter him and the Creatures that inhabit the marble undergrowth. Seaweed, when splayed atop and within Waters, so alive with the motion of the Tides and the depths that contain them – appear to be Trees of a sort.

This is less derivative and more so imaginative and extrapolatory on his part. When the seaweed washes up onto the bare shores of the drier Halls, there is not a hint of their Tree-like majesty. Piranesi hangs them from the outstretched features of the Statues and sees curtains and banners and other such beautiful Objects, that soon stiffen with their loss of Life, but never the Tree.

The first golden-yellow leaf that reveals itself to him does so untethered to parent Branch and forefather Trunk. He inspects its papery edges and hardy stalk, and though it cries to him to be returned to the Air of the Middle Halls and beyond, Piranesi replaces it on the Tide. The leaf floats, graceful and unencumbered.

Often, in the lull of fishing, Piranesi will witness the birds in their own dance and routine, whereby they gather fish and sea-creatures from the Tides without hook nor line nor rod. They fashion by their beaks their own hooks, and the rod and line – their own wings buoyant in the Air. They dive with the same efficiency Piranesi casts his line, and pierce the Water, and there is scarce a ripple to disturb his own fishing.

Other times he will see them peck at bedraggled piles of seaweed on the Floor, in their perpetual quest for food (as is he, but for Knowledge), before quickly rejecting the House’s offerings.

When he first lays eyes on the Tree it is easy to overlook. The leaves are green, paired, and bright against the Dark of the seaweed. Bright in an altogether different way against the marble white of the Floor and the froth of the Tides, but the Tree in its current state has nestled itself within a woven mat of seaweed, and so shines a bright green crystal from amidst a backdrop of brown.

He thinks it some budding growth of the seaweed itself, at first, but closer and closer he stoops and finds no pockets of air for underwater growth. The Leaf is bisected by fine lines, then other lines that radiate out to the edges. Its twin, the same.

The surfaces, dry to the touch.

The seaweed nest squelches underfoot as Piranesi unfolds himself to a standing position, and he commits it to memory as surely as any Statue that lines the Walls of the current Hall – the Thirty-Ninth Western.

The House has always given Life to its Inhabitants, whether birds or men or fish, and so why had the possibility for a Tree never occurred to him? Piranesi gives this subject some thought, then quickly abandons it as his mind swells with Minotaurs and Fauns and other great and fanciful creatures. Maybe they would not be equipped to wander the Halls and fish with their own beaks and craft fires with their Hands.

He resolves to watch over the Tree, determined and headstrong though it is.

In the weeks that come, the Tides swell and grow and disappear henceforth, bringing with them fish and birds and the sting of salt-spray. The Tree never does disappear, flourishing in its corner of the Thirty-Ninth Western Hall, under the protective gaze of the Woman with an Amphora, from which she pours a steady marble stream. Piranesi offers his own guidance in the form of water lilies, as though the Tree is very much the opposite of Dead, he wishes unto it the same peace and goodwill he does his Dead. He hopes the Tree does not mind.

The Tree sits at ankle-height, bright and bouncing above its decaying bed of seaweed. Piranesi brings more – the birds craft their nests with their beaks, and so he shapes the Tree a nest of fresh, wetted plant-life. Perhaps they can act as companions, also. He brings more water lilies.

When he who is neither Piranesi nor Matthew Rose Sorenson, but a recombination of the two, returns to the house in the summer of 2021, as he has done numerous times in the past weeks and months, the tree greets him from waist-height. Its leaves have curled in malnutrition and bent, heavy with snow, but today they sing and flutter with the glow of sunbeams. They are green unlike anything else in the house.

There is dirt and compost and seaweed enshrouding its roots, and when he lays a water lily on the bed from which the tree arose, it too shimmers, translucent in the light. He knows the tree will happily accept the offering, has _always_ accepted such offerings, bursting gorgeous and green towards the sky as the lilies shrivel and wilt. If only the dead would rise, living, from their decayed flesh-and-bones – but then the house would lose its shreds of peace. Ketterly would roam the halls once more. 

He casts the thought aside. The only, temporary, disturbance comes as he tilts his watering can, filled with fresh water from the same cracks and runnels that have always served him well. The tree drinks its fill. The water lily, though suspended temporarily between life-and-death, also soaks up the water. It sounds like the rain, unnatural on a sunny day like today, and when he sets the can aside after it has been emptied, only the song of the sea continues to batter these walls.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://swummeng-geys.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/hashtag_yikes)


End file.
